


Five times Sherlock and Lestrade never met. Five: Always falling down the same hill

by grassle



Series: Five times Sherlock and Lestrade never met [5]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M, References to Addiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-26
Updated: 2013-09-26
Packaged: 2017-12-27 19:39:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,715
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/982821
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grassle/pseuds/grassle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Disclaimer: I don't own these characters from the BBC's <i>Sherlock</i></p><p> <br/><i>“The symbol perfects itself by the accumulation of approximations. As such, it is comparable to a spiral, or rather, a solenoid, which each repetition brings closer to its target.”</i></p><p> </p><p> Gilbert Durand, <i>L'Imagination symbolique</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Five times Sherlock and Lestrade never met. Five: Always falling down the same hill

**Always falling down the same hill**

 

 _B2?_ Why did he even _have_ a B2 pencil in his pencil pot? And actually, why didn’t he have a _proper_ pencil pot, like most of the desks had, in mesh or transparent plastic? His was a stupid mug with big white dots on a black background, like a die. Lestrade poked at it. Couldn’t remember where he’d got it, but remembered finding it with the handle broken off, neatly, almost severed surgically, one day, and redeploying it to hold his pens and pencils. The violent jiggle to the mug had shaken a pencil to the front. HB. Result. Better for a person who pressed hard as he drew.

He turned the page over and started with small curlicue shapes, rounded, dark with shading, his mind turning over things as his hand doodled. He’d started on two slanted almond shapes a little way under the curls before he understood what his mind and hand were drawing. _Unfinished business._ Funny. He’d always had that sense, after that time, just as he’d had a sense of déjà vu during it. Made you believe in reincarnation.

Yeah, always thought he’d see him again, meet up once more. Okay; hoped, after that fucking amazing one-nighter. What he could remember of it. Well, the soreness – of _all_ the sets of muscle groups – told its own story. But he’d thought the reunion would be in some way extraordinary, something…epic. One of his recurring fantasies was that of a crime scene, that rangy figure sweeping in and delivering the solution to the problem, his torrent of words cut off by Lestrade’s grabbing him and…shutting him up. Well, actually, that varied. Sometimes _he_ was stunned into gibberish by the sight of Lestrade, losing his thread to fall silent and stalk predatorily over to him, grabbing him and…

Occasionally the scenario was other: Lestrade having to arrest him. Not that unlikely: his familiarity with coke, amongst other illegal substances, was not good. No. Lestrade kept his eyes open more than usual at drug-related arrests, anything involving dealers, dens…

Sometimes Lestrade wondered if he were being observed during his press conferences. Especially the live ones; maybe that tall, slim, great-looking bloke was lurking as Lestrade was being interviewed. Outside the station, maybe, when they had to get officers to stand in front of the graffiti, or maybe at the scene of the incident, some stirring backdrop…

Something dramatic and unusual, he’d always reckoned. What he’d never dreamt of was something as banal as bumping into him out Christmas shopping in the West End. No; that wasn’t fair. Lestrade, grabbing the 2B after all to shade around a titchy, slightly rounded shape, revised that. Because one thing that incident in the night club had taught him was that this bloke, _Sherlock_ , he’d learnt, was no innocent onlooker caught up in events.

 

“Help! Help! Someone help! He’s snatched my bag!”

Lestrade had been startled out of his cashpoint-queue trance at the screams from the woman at its head, and the wave of motion which had rippled down the short line of people from the impact the woman had sustained as the man yanked her bag free of her shoulder.

“He’s got my _handbag_!”

The second cry, as if in clarification, jolted him into action and he set off after the bloke, along with a couple of people from the scene. Nice of them. They didn’t have far to chase: within yards the bag snatcher was shouting and swearing as he was on the floor, having collided into a bystander and tripped over him. The pair was now entangled, their attempts to get free winding the passer-by’s woollen scarf and wrapping his shopping bags around the crook. The woman had reached them, and her screams and yells attracted a security guard from the nearest big shop who radio’ed in to get someone from Operation Presence.

A PC patrolling the hotspot was soon running through the crowds, who hopefully made way for the reflective red vest of those stationed to crack down on street offences. Retail crime was dealt with by the yellow vests, Lestrade knew, but despite his work setting this in motion three years ago, he couldn’t remember what colour handled the antisocial behaviour lot, the drunkenness, disorder, and aggressive or persistent begging. He hoped it was a colour that didn’t stain with all the puke from drunken girls rolling out of Christmas parties.

“Fourth time today some thief legging it tripped over someone!” commented the constable, tugging the cursing and struggling crook free of the poor sod on the pavement. “Two here and two on Regent. Come with me, miss? The mobile unit’s just there. Give your statement, and you’ll be off.”

“But this man?” the woman was asking, pointing over her shoulder at the floor and the skinny gent whose store bags were being picked up by cheering, clapping shoppers, one of whom reached down to straighten his Santa hat for him, setting it back on his head and not over his face anymore. Lestrade didn’t hear the constable’s reply. All his attention was fixed on the hair and face being revealed, the soft, silky dark curls and the pale face with strange eyes, cheekbones like shelves and lips like sin.

 _Him!_ The electric charge of memory hit Lestrade hard and painfully, and he gasped and rubbed the heel of his hand against his breastbone. He could do nothing but gawp down at Him who was canting his head back to stare up at Lestrade, an annoyed look now in those slanted eyes. Eyes that were unbelievably, impossibly, absorbing the gaudy lights of the shop and street decorations and shoppers’ lurid gift bags to refine and purify these hues, like an oyster with grit, to gleam blue and grey and green and even gold within a minute. What the hell kind of colour was that?

 _“Glasz,_ ” the man said, answering the unvoiced question. “Breton word, coined to describe the shifting shades of the sea and sky and coast found there.” His tone was snippy, his gaze irritated.

“Oh, I’m –”

“Detective Inspector Lestrade. I know.” He put out a hand, and Lestrade shook it, feeling the voltage power through him.

“I meant could you help me up.” This through clenched teeth.

“Oh, yeah. Right.” Lestrade found his voice and his strength and his wits and pulled the man to his feet. Nearly sent the skinny bugger flying. He needed to keep hold of the hand, to stop him vanishing into the crowd.

“You’re John…?”

The man sighed, rolling his eyes. “Sherlock Holmes.”

 _SH._ Oh.

“Fourth today?” He seized on that titbit.

Sherlock shrugged. “If you say so. Right place, right time.” He tugged his hand free.

“Good Samaritan?”

“Did you…want something from me, Inspector?” And that voice. Deep and dark, yet it had been playful and suffused with energy _before_. Hardly surprising, after the line of coke. He made a slight movement, and Lestrade frowned, seeing how the question could be interpreted, but it seemed Sherlock was nudging them to the edge of the pavement, away from tutting shoppers squeezing past them. The hero of a few moments ago was quite unknown now as the stream had flowed on and away. Lestrade’s foot caught on one of the metallic red and green gift bags Sherlock had been toting. It sailed out into the road. It was very light, filled with an empty cardboard box.

Whatever he’s up to, I’m queering his pitch, Lestrade suddenly realised.

“Inspector?” This was sighed, in a hurry-it-along tone.

“Yeah. Sorry. Can you take a break from…this? I wanna get you a drink. Coffee. Whatever. Say thanks for going above and beyond in your civic duty. My treat. Come on.” He managed to get the stiff-with-suspicion Sherlock moving in front of him, still not trusting the will-o’-the-wisp wouldn’t wisp off, and betting this overthin, overgrown bloke could do with a hot drink and a snack. He thought he’d surprised him when they turned off the main road to a smaller street, into one of those pockets of calm found unexpectedly amidst the bustle of London.

“You can take that stupid hat off now,” Lestrade commented, and as Sherlock frowned at him, whipped it off the dark curls himself, stuffing it into Sherlock’s pocket.

Sherlock stared narrow-eyed at the A4-size signboard set on the floor at the beginning of an even smaller and narrower alleyway off that street, and Lestrade grinned. “Not trying to lure you anywhere. Just that coppers always know where to eat and drink.”

Sherlock looked up at the huge old building, his eerie eyes assessing, cataloguing, before they entered its long, narrow, brick-walled ground floor. Lestrade hoped the wary sod wouldn’t ask for any information about the factory the building had once been. _Victorian_ was the extent of Lestrade’s knowledge on the subject, and that a guess.

“This one okay?” The long wooden tables were all alike anyway, all with a good view of the blackboard announcing the fare. Sherlock fell silent, so Lestrade ordered carrot and walnut cake, and apple and maple syrup cake, and tea and coffee. Something should do the trick.

“So, explain the hat,” he said suddenly.

“Same reason as these.” Sherlock stuck out a foot to show Christmas-tree-patterned socks. Wow. Looked like he’d been the loser in his work’s Secret Santa present exchange. No way was he the sort to wear that sort of thing. Lestrade grinned.

“Aww. In being such a good citizen, you forgot your ‘Christmas presents.’ Shame. Must have taken you ages, all that choosing, gift wrapping…”

“Inspector. _Please,_ ” replied Sherlock, and the look on his face at realising Lestrade understood the disguise could only be described as a smirk. He laid the daft red-and-white hat on the table.

“Tell me the story,” asked Lestrade, pouring tea.

“What.”

“About street crime.”

“Oh.” Sherlock drank the whole pot of tea but didn’t eat a thing as he launched into a tale of two ATMs, one on Regent Street and one on Oxford, considered easy pickings for dipping or rolling the punters using them, as the stuck-on inverted green triangles next to them showed, just as the arrangement of orange dots showed when the pitch was reserved and by whom. Despite the CCTV and the police, escape was easy if one knew the traffic flow and timings… The lecture was delivered at top speed, the information thrown out, the tone incisive.

“ _Pro bono publico._ That your family motto?” Lestrade asked.

“Hardly. No. I…like this city. I like it here.”

Lestrade waited, calm, unruffled, and, “And I owed some help to someone who helped me,” came, grudgingly. Yeah. That seemed more like it.

“You know what’s going on in crime, faces on the scene, that sort of stuff? You’ve got contacts on the streets?” Lestrade asked slowly.

“Inspector,” replied Sherlock, laying down his cup. “What are you –”

“I was thinking, wondering, really, if you fancy teaching a Masterclass, seminar, whatever at the borough command? We could do with some fresh insight, new angles. And it’d pay. And there’d be lunch. But you’d mostly be doing us a favour.”

“Oh, no. I’d be _consulting_ for you.” And his sharp glance broke over Lestrade, breaking into slivers of green and blue and grey and gold, leaving a further splinter to lodge itself next to the shards of memory already buried deep.

 

Lestrade, now dashing little feathery lines to sketch a shape under the tiny round one, something halfway between a bow and a heart, something rounded and plush but with a sharp notch to the middle, smiled as he recalled laughing again at the hat and socks as they parted. And that had been their reunion, the beginning, if you liked, of their relationship, their friendship, their…acquaintance. Their business. Their possibility.

Working with him was unlike working or being with anyone else. With others there were no hints and shadows of other times and other places, nor with other people did a remembrance of a shared night suddenly twist free out of the blue and fracture, momentarily paralysing. It made Lestrade turn away, unable to look down the kaleidoscope or into the hall of mirrors. But he wanted to. Wanted to bring it up. Just, it didn’t happen.

Because Sherlock wasn’t like anyone else. He was mysterious, flitting about, here, there and everywhere at once, appearing, vanishing, casting a long shadow, present even when he wasn’t. Lestrade was attracted, he acknowledged, more than, _fascinated_ , but unable to approach him, broach it. It would be like pinning an exotic specimen to a board. And yeah, the idiot was also rude, careless, thoughtless, everything less, annoying, infuriating, most _ings_ , making Lestrade want to grab him and shake the irritation out of him and spank some sense into him and… _Woah. Not helping._

Their relationship was professional. No; stupid way to phrase it after that first night… Lestrade mostly contacted him by mobile. Yeah. Better. He wasn’t exactly invited round to dinner to discuss things. Because Sherlock was a squatter, or lived in a commune, or was a re-appropriator of empty property or whatever the fashionable term was. Lestrade knew, because he’d paid a nark to follow Sherlock and report back. It was neither some rat-infested deserted East End warehouse or cinema populated by pale ghosts of druggies nor some Grade-something listed Belgravia mansion of some absentee Arab or Russian turned into a political or art or freegan collective or protest movement.

No; it was just some town house between Russell and Bloomsbury Squares, behind the British Museum. Sherlock hadn’t been there long – squats had a short life, really – and Lestrade had no idea where he’d been before. Sherlock seemed to share with a shifting population, some of them students at the nearby unis, some…more unsavoury. Lestrade slashed in two darker lines on his sketch, making angular shapes slant, one each side, to the sides of the rounded button and the rosebud shape.

His unasked questions about Sherlock’s…habits hung over their encounters, particularly when Sherlock was being a nightmare of a whirlwind, a nitpicky, pain-in-the-arse bully, one whose intellectual genius and fields of knowledge made him able to find solutions to the most obscure, most puzzling of problems, and one whose shortcomings and needs made Lestrade want to…kiss him better. Shag him senseless. Ride him into the middle of next week and then cuddle him close and warm. So yeah, Lestrade’s having to hide all that made things rather… _involved_.

Because the initial talks and seminars had led to further consultations and brainstorming of cases, at first with details carefully changed or withheld, but gradually via Sherlock skimming through the files. He could get anything he wanted from Lestrade, and he knew it. Easy. Then one particularly baffling high-profile crime, with them all stumped and a quick result needed, Lestrade had refused to let Sherlock interrogate suspects. Of course he had! If Sherlock wanted to be a police office that badly, he could sodding well join the force. The force of nature had whirled into Lestrade’s flat early the next morning, his eyes shining as brilliant as diamonds, the vivid glints of light spilling out as he twirled, rattling off the solution.

Lestrade found out later Sherlock had donned some sort of uniform, pretended to be something other than what he was, and got into the holding room and into conversation with first the bloke, then his brother. And God, the trouble it took to hide this, to edit it, gloss it… Yeah, he was complicit. An accomplice. They were in it together.

And the effort it took Lestrade when he grabbed the shining, peacocking, heart-racing dervish by the upper arms and shook him, oh, the effort not to kiss him, hard and long, made him see, make him understand that…this wasn’t on. That it couldn’t be.

Sherlock stared hard at him, his gaze reading Lestrade’s longings as they shone clear in his eyes. His hand came up, Braille-reading Lestrade’s desires written in the lines of his face. Lestrade stared back and pressed his hand on top of Sherlock’s for one heartbeat. Two. A third, before he closed his eyes and backed away, away from the truth-seeking missiles and too-thin, unkempt fingers.

He’d closed his eyes not because he was afraid of reading blankness or even rejection in Sherlock’s look, but because if he saw his own want reflected there, that would hurt more. Because _they_ couldn’t be, not with _this_ , _like_ this.

 

Now he erased a line of his drawing, making it thinner, and added smudges as he remembered the words he’d found the guts to say, at last: “Sherlock. Are you…clean? Because…” And the too-quick answer, “Mostly,” before Sherlock rushed out.

But he didn’t think it was more mostly than not, so he got a detective sergeant to go with him, off-duty, to follow Sherlock for a couple of nights, and it only took two, tailing him to the City, before they saw him meeting a contact outside a noisy wine bar.

 _“Here?_ ” Vik was astounded, for all he was a good detective. Not long in London. Lestrade remembered. In the Midlands or Up North they probably didn’t have a big financial centre with loadsmoney sloshing about and whiz kids spending the night chasing the rush they rode during their day.

“They get high on what they do for a living,” Lestrade muttered, craning around a small loud-mouthed group sloshing bubbly in plastic glasses around as they told a story and interrupted one another to see Sherlock and the young bloke he was dealing with. He knew Sherlock detested these types. Made it all the harder to see him feigning cheer and bonhomie as he laughed and clapped the bloke on the back. Made it easier to play this sociology teacher cum guide role. “Work hard, play harder. You get better stuff round here. More discerning palates. More cash. The risk –”

Sherlock turned and looked straight at him, isolating the two of them in their neutral greys amidst all the loud colours of the City shirts and ties and suits and cars and awnings and red carpets and green plants and pink hanging baskets. Everything, all the braying voices and bursting music and tinny ringtones and roaring cars faded, or froze, as they stared, Sherlock maybe reading the sadness and regret and dying hope in Lestrade, and Lestrade seeing the sudden anger, then self-awareness and self-disgust in Sherlock.

Sherlock had gone away for a while after that. Least, he stopped answering his phone, or messages or e-mails. And Lestrade wouldn’t go to the squat. He was a little busy, getting a life himself, thank you. Not everything had to revolve around the genius. He’d had people before, actually.

And one evening, Sherlock had come back. No warning, nothing. Lestrade scowled as he sketched a long coat on the stick-thin figure on his page, recalling Sherlock just being there all of a dirty great sudden in front of Lestrade’s table in the Hart when something made Lestrade look up.

“Sherlock?” Obviously. Who else. No one else looked liked that, or stared down at him with an expression like that.

“Greg.”

Greg? Didn’t think he –

“Is everything all right? You’ve –”

“Been away. Back now. Not at the flat anymore. Staying with my brother for a while. I’m clean now.”

And Lestrade had been on the point of springing to his feet at that grenade, delivered half defiantly, half _something else_ when Sherlock stepped aside suddenly as Vikram came up behind him. Vik looked at them, then his gaze left Lestrade to range over the slim figure in the expensive coat and shoes. He obviously recognised him.

“Oh.” And just as obviously, Sherlock understood, read the signs of the drinks placed next to each other, the small half booth and no chairs placed around the table. “I have to go.”

And he had, and Lestrade had never ever been able to work out if Sherlock had been trying to tell him something, and if so, _what_. Had…fantasised, of course. But that had seemed to be that. Even if Lestrade hadn’t been with someone, the other tall, affluently dressed male figure which had walked up and waited for Sherlock to re-join him had told him with one simple up-and-down glance and a pitying twist to his lips and a sad shake of his head that Sherlock was not for the likes of him.

Not that Sherlock needed anyone to be his spokesperson. Loved shouting the odds too much himself. Wasn’t shy about making his opinions known. Like that evening, late, when he’d come in here and found Lestrade alone in near darkness except for the small splash of light from the desk lamp he needed to see to sketch the face of a man, someone he was no longer involved with, as of that day. Lestrade rubbed at the fat wet saline drop which plonked onto the page and scowled to stifle any further.

“It would have ended sooner or later.”

Yeah, he’d jumped at the intruder’s deep, smooth tone and hit his knee on the desk.

“The weight of your job, his job, your higher rank, the secrecy your affair was shrouded in, the cultural, religious and age differences. No. Would have ended within three months, like it did with the other one. Can’t you see the pattern? Well. Isn’t it easier now rather than later?”

“And what if I said I didn’t want it easier, you callous bastard? That not everyone’s too scared to reach out in case they get hurt? Because they’re too afraid to trust, to feel? Wouldn’t rather numb themselves than risk _feeling_? And that feelings, even getting hurt’s part of things and… No. Not callous or cruel. Heartless. Literally. Because you’ve never been brave enough to be vulnerable, which is how you grow one.” He knew even as he leapt to his feet and yelled that he was unloading a backlog of things he’d needed to say to Sherlock for years. He stopped, appalled and a little ashamed.

“Greg.” Sherlock spoke stiffly. “I understand now my timing, my being here now, is not correct. And that you’re hurt, for which I’m sorry.” He turned to go, but returned to leave a big white hanky on the desk in front of Lestrade, whose arm he patted, just as stiffly, before he was gone. After a stunned, silent minute, Lestrade burst out laughing. He laughed until he cried, mainly at how wrong his accusations had been, and how lousy their timing was, and how fickle fate was. And he laughed now, and added a hanky to his illustration, sticking out of the pocket of the well-cut trousers.

And of course within a week he understood Sherlock had been right, that this affair had followed the pattern of his previous – that there was a pattern. That he seemed to choose someone it would be impossible to sustain a long-term commitment with, someone who looked up to him in some way, younger perhaps, or his junior, someone fine with doing things his way, at his pace – someone he then almost despised. Sherlock…wasn’t like that. At all. Could never be.

He decided to tell him so, buy him supper at the end of the meeting, tell him…thanks, at least, if he hadn’t the courage for more. Even though he’d been re-living – living in – that light he’d seen in those beautiful, beautifully strange eyes. _The light of hope._

“Sherlock! Hang about!” He’d caught up with him in the car park out the front. “I wanted to catch you.”

“Umm. That would be why you chased me.”

“Detective, or something? Well. Thanks for all your help with this operation. The superintendent has a personal stake in this, so we all have to…” He shut up as Sherlock raised a cynical brow. “Listen. Do you wanna get a bite to eat? I’m buying. Just to say thanks and that.”

Sherlock had turned his wrist to see the time on his…new watch. New swanky looking watch, the same one Lestrade was adding to his drawing now, switching to pen to poke hard lines on the page and add in the expensive timepiece and the new phone suddenly appearing in Sherlock’s hand. “Nice,” said Lestrade, nodding at the gadgets. “New.”

“Indeed. Presents. I’m meeting someone. Well, he’s picking me up, I should say. He, we have plans.” Sherlock slipped a tie out of his picket and knotted it round his neck, with a skill Lestrade envied. Didn’t even look. He looked less thin than usual, if that was a thing. Sort of sleek. He smelt nice too. Rich and complicated.

“You’re not with your brother anymore.” It wasn’t a question.

“No.” Sherlock looked at him levelly. “We’ve never got on. He’s overbearing. Antediluvian.”

“You’re not squatting, either.”

“No. That lost its charm. And if you’ve something to say –” Sherlock broke off at the parp of the car horn. They both looked as the Jag’s door opened and an arm waved. Beckoned.

“Where?” He meant _who_ or even _why_.

“Someone I knew at uni. Bumped into him again recently. He’s always…” This with a shrug, and looking, Lestrade saw those amazing eyes which blazed with so many different colours and emotions were less alive than usual.

“Sherlock, you don’t –”

“Yes; I do.” Sherlock shook his arm free of Lestrade’s hand. “For a while at least. You were right, you know. I’m not as brave as you. Go home, Greg,” he called as he left.

He did, but first he watched Sherlock get into the car and be driven off. They never spoke of it again, and Greg didn’t exactly know what it was or how long it had lasted, but noticed as soon as Sherlock stopped looking like a bloody living Ken doll, started recycling his clothes. Sherlock slapped a Post-It note down on a report Lestrade was reading one day, and at Lestrade’s frown announced, “New address. And phone number.”

Yeah; he had him followed again, hating himself, and was told it was a huge Victorian house divided into studio flats. Montague Street, strangely enough. Back where he’d started. A kiss-off present, maybe, the lease paid for a while. And within a week there were complaints about Sherlock, his noise, his experiments, the fumes, the stenches, the odd hours, the visitors… And Donovan had won the bet on when the Freak would be chucked out: he’d announced it to her yesterday when he was sniffing around and getting run off from the serial suicides case.

And now? Lestrade frowned at his drawing, not understanding who the second figure he’d added was and what that structure behind them, with the triangle over their heads represented. Then he did. Oh, right. His subconscious had come through again. Oh, why lie. He’d known for hours now he was going to offer Sherlock his spare room, ask him to stay, to share, to live with him. He…wanted that, and thought Sherlock did too. They’d been through so much, had so many _almosts_ and _nearlies_. Surely they were both ready now, both at the same place? He thought he knew that, deep down. And Sherlock knew everything…

Yeah. He ignored the pile of forensic reports he’d been studying to find a connection in the three apparently unrelated deaths and instead rose and grabbed his car keys. Sherlock was at the hospital lab, would be till the early afternoon now his home lab was denied him and that Mike bloke would do anything for him after Sherlock had sorted out that little problem at Barts for him.

He’d park up and catch him coming out. Then he’d wear his heart on his sleeve, not let the smooth talker get a work in edgeways until he’d laid it all out and convinced him no more advance, retreat, no more near misses: they were both _here_ , _now_ and it was time. _Their_ time. 

“I'm losing ground  
you know how this world can beat you down  
I'm made of clay  
I fear I'm the only one who thinks this way  
I'm always falling down the same hill.”

Lyrics from _I do not want this_ , album _The Downward Spira_ l Nine Inch Nails


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